Jesus: The Son of Man has no place to lay his head

Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.

– Jesus, The New Testament, Matthew 8:20, Luke 9:58.

Again, this describes an immediate experience and (nearly) as directly as is possible.

We may seek nests and dens through identifications with images and stories, and it does give the appearance of a home, somewhere secure. And yet, it’s not really secure, and it’s not really working. We all know these identifications are as ephemeral as mirages. They are temporal. They can be shot down by a single word from someone else, a single of our own thoughts, any shift in our circumstances (no longer supporting our identification). There is no image or thought we can make into a solid and lasting nest for ourselves.

For myself, I notice that seeing this – in concrete and specific situations and with concrete and specific images and thoughts – may bring up some temporary fear, and it also brings a huge relief. I don’t need to try to find a den in images or thoughts, because they don’t really work. There is another security in this, a sense of coming home in a different and more real way.

Another way to describe this, again as close to experience as possible, is as a free fall. The astronauts in Earth orbit are in a constant free fall (zero g) and yet they never land (as long as they are in orbit!). And that’s a quite fitting image of this experience.